Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Just in case you missed it, there was a very nice article on the front page of the Business section in yesterdays (6/12) Plain Dealer. It was on a local Uni-Solar solar shingle installation done by a friend, Al Frasz.

Here is a link to the on-line article, but they didn't include the wonderful photo that was in the printed version :-(

Note the estimated numbers; we need to see more of this, if people are going to begin to adapt and retrofit:

The calculator (go through tinyurl.com/ywg7rv) shows that a solar array in Greater Cleveland can be expected to generate about 75 percent of what one in San Diego typically generates. The system, including the backup battery power addition, was expensive - about $30,000. But a state grant of nearly $10,000, a federal tax credit of 30 percent of the total cost and accelerated state and federal depreciation schedules made the net cost about $5,000.

"We did not add this and mark up the price. We discounted the solar in the [$295,900] price of the house," Kornell said.

Pointing to the neighboring homes that have sold for as much as $308,000, Kornell argues that "the actual cost of solar could disappear very easily when competing in the real estate market."

At today's electric rates, it will take more than a dozen years for the system to pay for itself in lower electric bills. But if the state deregulates rates as scheduled in 2009, allowing utilities to charge whatever the market will bear, the payback time should quickly shrink.Whoever buys the Hambden house won't be able to cut the wire to CEI, however, no matter what the rates are.

The annual sun power will be enough to replace a quarter to a third of the average residential consumption here, which is about 750 to 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month or 9,000 to 12,000 a year.

But then this home is average in only one sense, its size: 2,150 square feet. All the appliances, the furnace, air conditioning and lighting meet federal Energy Star specs, said Kornell. Combine those efficiencies with solar output and you get electric bills that should be about half what the neighbors in similar homes are paying, he said.